2000 to 1

Contents

Host

Broadcast

BBC One, 4 December 1999 to 16 March 2001 (11 episodes in 2 series, 2001 as 1000 to 1)

Synopsis

On the basis that bigger is better and Fifteen-to-One is great, surely this is going to be (quick calculation) 133 and-a-third times greater, surely? Well actually... not really.

It had a noble cause, though. In order to qualify you had to donate your final hour's pay of the millennium to the Children's Promise, a charity that hopes to makes kids lives easier. To make it even better, the eventual winner won double their salary and a whole year off work.

Now in theory that sounds great, and then you realise that the sort of people who would donate the cash probably don't earn that much anyway, and twice very little is still little so you can forget going around the world. So what you've really won is boredom for a whole year. Excellent! It's Ultra Quiz all over again!

Hosted by the thinking-woman's Terry Wogan chat-show king Parky and the non-thinking man's Carol Vorderman Katy Hill, every week for five whole weeks 400 people would congregate into a studio and would get whittled down to one eventual winner who would go through to the final.

And they'd do this by being split up into several groups. After several multiple choice questions, the groups that did the worst would be eliminated until they reduced 400 to just 25. This was done by dividing the audience up into coloured sectors, the lowest scoring sectors getting knocked out in pairs after every few rounds. This was completely unfair, and they knew it.

From the final 25, it was every man and woman for themselves. The five individuals who did worst (in terms of answer and speed of response) over pairs of questions would be whittled away until there was just five, and then they'd be reduced to two. At this stage the losers would be bathed in a beam of strong white light so we can't see them any more. The final pair would do the Millennium Minute - 60 seconds of rapid-fire either/or questions and whoever did best went through to the final on Millennium Eve.

And herein lies our problem. We were all too out of our heads to care who won because we weren't watching. Somebody must have won though. [Actually it was John Mitchell, who looked like Jesus. Apparently. - Ed]

1000 to 1

The set

The show returned in early 2001, but with half the amount of players, entitled 1000 to 1. The ultimate winner won 1000 prizes for themselves, and 1000 prizes for Comic Relief projects across the UK (it was a Comic Relief tie in, you see).

The audience/players

The rounds were interspersed with Red Nose News with Angela Rippon and Harry Hill, the latter wearing a red nose which constantly inflated and deflated.